This blog is one of millions out there, hence the title. I update it frequently but not regularly. I have strong opinions, and they tend to be expressed with, shall we say, some "colorful language". If you are easily offended, leave. Now. Otherwise, keep reading, and post a comment if you wish.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Adventures on the City Bus

I don’t ride the Toledo city bus any more. Allow me to
explain.

Years ago, when I first started in my job, I began riding
the bus to work. It seemed ideal to me at the time. After all, there’s a bus
stop half a block away from my house, and the route drops me off literally
across the street from where I work. It’s also cheaper than daily parking ($2
round trip, as opposed to $4, $5, or even as much as $6 per day to park
downtown). And I saved the gas money, as well as car wear and tear.

Also, with someone else driving, I was free to read or
listen to morning news on the radio. And the bus ran on time, more or less.

Eventually, however, I found a lot only 3 blocks away from my workplace where
I could park daily for only $30 per month (the cost of a parking space in downtown T-Town is inversely proportional to its distance from the center of downtown). It made more economic sense: Monthly
bus fees: $56. Monthly parking fees: $30. Even buying tokens, which cost 10
cents less per trip, saved me only $2.80 per month. And, for those inevitable
times when I needed to drive to work, I would be stuck with the higher daily parking
fee.

So I quit riding the bus. My car was simply more convenient.
Ta heck with the environment, ah needs mah car!

At any rate, TARTA (Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority),
the Toledo
area’s bus system, is hopelessly inadequate. You see, Toledo is a small town trapped in a big city.
It is not large enough to require a major mass transit system, and far too
spread out to operate one efficiently (or profitably).

Also, there are 3 large cities in Ohio, and Toledo
isn’t one of them. Those 3 cities, (Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland,
often referred to as simply “the three C’s”), while they may be politically and
ideologically different, are inextricably connected by a vast money belt that
has 3 buckles that land in those 3 cities, from the southwest to the northeast corner. These 3 cities
receive the bulk of state money, while the cities and towns outside the reach
of that money belt scrabble among themselves for the scraps left behind.

Toledo
often gets the fuzzy end of that lollipop, being a reliably Democratic-leaning
city in a State controlled for years by a mostly Republican legislature and far
too often a Republican Governor. What money we do receive from the state often
goes to the far wealthier (and Republican) suburbs. So Toledo is usually on its own as far as money
goes. And in bad economic times, Toledo
suffers.

Which brings me, in my usual roundabout way, to my point:
There is no money to improve on the city’s mass transit system (or anything
else for that matter).

And it needs improvement! Most bus routes haven’t changed in decades. Every bus route still leads to the downtown area, despite the fact
that nearly every business once located in downtown Toledo either went out of business or moved
out to the suburban areas decades ago. The only people who still work downtown
every day are the poor government schlubs (like me) or the people who provide them
with food, drinks, or other services. Walk down any downtown street after 6
p.m. (when there’s no baseball or hockey game on) and you may not meet another
person during your entire walk.

So being forced to take a bus downtown is silly. And if you
want to travel from one part of the Toledo
area to another, you must first take one bus downtown, transfer to another bus,
and then repeat the process on the way back. A trip that you could drive in 20
minutes can easily take up to two hours by bus. And forget about taking a bus
anywhere on a weekend. If you’re going to try, take a book. I might suggest War and Peace.

So TARTA needs a serious revamp. It’s gotten so bad that
some suburbs are threatening to pull out of the system completely. One already
has.

The problem is the money to overhaul the system does not
exist. It’s barely making ends meet right now. And it survives at its current
level by a continuous series of tax levies, which must be approved by voters
every few years. And fewer and fewer voters are seeing the value of the current
system.

A couple of years ago, a medical issue forced me to stop
driving for 3 months on doctor’s orders (I was actually lucky – most states
would’ve kept me from behind the wheel for a year. Or more.) So I got stuck
riding TARTA to work again. It served to remind me of why I didn’t miss riding
it.

I’ve ridden buses in cities with mass transit systems that
worked well. I know it can be done. But the money and the will to do it have to
be there. TARTA lacks both.